Brief History of the City of Tigard (Oregon)

Before colonization by European settlers, the Aftalati inhabited the Tualatin Valley in several hunter-gatherer villages including Chachimahiyuk ("Place of aromatic herbs"), near present-day Tigard. Primary food stuffs included deer, camas root, fish, berries, elk, and various nuts. To encourage the growth of the camas plant and maintain a habitat beneficial to deer and elk, the group regularly burned the valley floor to discourage the growth of forests, a common practice among the Kalapuya. Prior to contact with white explorers, traders, and missionaries, the Kalapuya population is believed to have numbered as many as 15,000 people. 

Euro-Americans began arriving in the Atfalati's homeland in the early 19th century, and settlers in the 1840s. As with the other Kalapuyan peoples, the arrival of Euro-Americans led to dramatic social disruptions. By the 1830s, diseases had decimated the Atfalati. The tribe had already experienced population decreased from smallpox epidemics in 1782 and 1783. It is estimated that the band was reduced to a population of around 600 in 1842, and had shrunk to only 60 in 1848. These upheavals diminished the Atfalati's ability to challenge white encroachment.

Under the terms of a treaty signed on April 19, 1851, the Atfalatis ceded their lands in return for a small reservation at Wapato Lake as well as money, clothing, blankets, tools, a few rifles, and a horse for each Kalapuyan. That treaty was renegotiated later, which was signed January 4, 1855, and ratified by Congress, on March 3^rd. 1855. Under the terms of the treaty, the indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley agreed to remove to a reservation later designated by the federal government as the Grand Ronde reservation in the western part of the Willamette Valley at the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range, sixty miles south of their original homeland. 

The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 promoted homestead settlement in the Oregon territory and encouraged thousands of white settlers to come to the area. Like many towns in the Willamette Valley, Tigard was settled by several families. The most noteworthy was the Tigard family, headed by Wilson M. Tigard, arriving in the area known as "East Butte" in 1852, following the Oregon Trail. There, the family settled and became involved in organizing and building the East Butte School in 1853, because Wilson Tigard felt the need for a school for his children and the neighbors’ children who lived scattered about in the woods in the vicinity. Afterwards, he opened a general store in 1886, which also housed the area's first post office and a meeting hall, and renamed East Butte to "Tigardville".

Tigard's oldest son John built a house in 1880 on a plot of land that is now at the intersection of Gaarde Street and Oregon Route 99W, in Tigard. With the time, the structure began to deteriorate and became run down by the 1970s. Then, a group of residents formed the Tigard Historical Association to prevent the house from being torn down. They moved the house in 1978 to its present location on Canterbury Lane at 103rd, east of the original location. The group then restored the home. 

The Evangelical organization built the Emanuel Evangelical Church at the foot of Bull Mountain, south of the Tigard Store in 1886. A blacksmith shop was opened in the 1890s by John Gaarde across from the Tigard Store, and in 1896 the East Butte school was opened to handle the growth the community was experiencing from an incoming wave of German settlers. In early 1900s other schools were opened: St. Anthony, Tigard Elementary, and Tigard Union High School.

The period between 1907 and 1910 marked a rapid acceleration in growth as Main Street blossomed with the construction of several new commercial buildings: Germania Hall (a two-story building featuring a restaurant, grocery store, dance hall, and rooms to rent), a shop/post office, and a livery stable. Limited telephone service began in 1908. The town was renamed Tigard in 1907 by the railroad to greater distinguish it from the nearby Wilsonville and the focus of the town reoriented northeast towards the new rail stop as growth accelerated. McDonald’s General Store, the Grange Hall, the telephone office next door to the south; Gaarde’s Blacksmith Shop just north of Gaarde Avenue on the highway; the Evangelical Church and some other buildings or businesses remained in the old town.

In 1910, the arrival of the Oregon Electric Railway triggered the development of Main Street and pushed Tigardville from being merely a small farming community into a period of growth which would lead to its incorporation as a city fifty years later. 1911 marked the introduction of electricity, as the Tualatin Valley Electric company joined Tigard to a service grid with Sherwood and Tualatin. The first bank of Tigard started in 1919 in the building which is the City Hall now; Charles F. Tigard was its first president. 

The first newspaper in Tigard was The Sentinel, published by the Pioneer Publishing Company in 1924. There was no high school in Tigard until 1926. In the 1930s the streets and walks of Main Street were finally paved, and another school established to accommodate growth. In 1940 the State Highway Commission awarded a contract for construction of a concrete overcrossing over the Southern Pacific tracks in Tigard to improve traffic flow on Pacific Highway.

In the 2004 general elections, the city of Tigard won approval from its voters to annex the unincorporated suburbs on Bull Mountain, a hill to the west of Tigard. In 2019, artist Jeremy Nichols painted a public mural in downtown at the Fanno Creek Trail, which reflects western Oregon’s native flora and fauna and honors the indigenous Kalapuya. Today, Tigard’s historic and walkable downtown offers unique shopping, eating and drinking establishments, as well as access to the Tigard Street Heritage Trail and Plaza, the Fanno Creek Trail and the Tigard Transit Center. There is something for everyone in downtown.

References:

-         A History of Tigard, by Mary Payne, 1979.

-       The Beginning of the Town of Tigard, by Neva Root.

-       Tigard, Images of America, by Barbara Bennett Peterson, PhD. Arcadia Publishing, 2013.

-       Tigard Public Library videos: A Main Street Story; Going Downtown Road; School Days

-       Tigard, Oregon, Wikipedia.